I push everything I have into them, until my heart arrests and muscles seize. Until I shatter into a million pieces, darkness rushes into every aperture and crevice, and the entire world snuffs out like one weeping candle.
Chapter 28
I dream of snow. It’s a strange thing to dream, because I’ve never seen snow. It’s one of those mythical story-time phenomena, just a fanciful thing to imagine.
The dream is reluctant to leave me as I wake, but consciousness wriggles through, eating away at it like moths. The first thing I feel is cold. The coldest I’ve ever been. Cold in my muscles, my bones. Even my eyes are cold, my lungs.
Then the pain. My heart hurts like it’s collapsed and someone has built steel girders in my chest to keep me from falling into its brokenness. My breathing hurts, a deep and unusual pain that slowly beats away my dream and stirs me to consciousness.
I’m abnormally tired, like I could sleep forever and it still wouldn’t be sufficient. Everything is dark, save for a dim, flickering light. I stare at its uneven lambency before recognizing it as a lamp. The rest of my unconsciousness falls away, and only then do I hear the angry river beside me. I can’t see the sky. I’ve always thought of the canyon as a great maw, and now its jaws have closed around me.
I roll to my side, a weak groan pressing my throat. Sleep. I just want to sleep.
Something thumps nearby. The cold penetrating me makes it hard to turn my head. Monster. I didn’t get them all. Of course I didn’t. And now this one will consume me.
I’m almost too tired to care. If I can just fall back into my dream . . .
Thump. Thump.
I dig an elbow into the cold, moist earth beneath me. Mud clings to my clothes, skin, and hair as I lift onto an elbow and peer north. Shadows coat everything, but as the monster nears, my glimmering lamp catches its edges. It isn’t the largest I’ve faced, but it’s larger than I am. Memories of fear stir in my belly, but they’re sleepy, too.
Then I notice its light. My sluggish mind can’t recount monsters that glow. But the footsteps approach, and the creature takes on a greenish hue and bright eyes. Lifts its lamp.
“I thought it was you,” it says. It sounds strangely like Unach.
My neck loses its strength, and I slip back into the muddy, blissful slumber.
When I wake again, I’m jerking up, up, up, on the waterworkers’ plank. I blink, waiting for my senses to connect.
“—came out in droves,” Unach is saying. She sounds like she’s on the other side of a wall of water. “All breeds and species, even the ones that hunt each other. Utter insanity. I knew something was wrong. I knew it had to be you.”
Ropes slide. Pulleys creak. Up, up, up.
She sighs. “I know you’re good. I know you’re useful. I know Azmar . . . loves . . . you, if he was willing to part with his stone. In truth, I thought he’d be a lifelong bachelor.”
Something new and sharp hurts under the persistent ache.
I force my eyelids open. Force myself to look where the lamp highlights Unach’s armor.
“If you were trollis, I would love you, too.” She’s so quiet. Maybe I heard wrong. “But you’re not, so I can’t. Either way . . .” Wind blows. No, that’s a sigh. “I can’t let you die. If you die, I’ll lose my brother completely.”
I try to respond. I don’t understand my own words. My voice hurts, deep and raw. I’m so tired.
The plank halts. The lamp lifts. Unach reaches toward me. I feel a slap on my cheek.
“Wake up, Lark,” she says.
But I’m gone.
I rouse sometime the next day, in my apartment, on my cot. Afternoon, judging by the sunlight prodding my little window. Ritha sews beside me. My chest feels like an anvil compresses it. Ritha hears me and lifts my head, offering water. It tastes strange. She’s put something in it.
“I know what you did,” Ritha says, feeling my neck. “Don’t do it again. Your heart can’t take it.”
My heart. I press my hand to it. It smells like lavender.
“No monsters and no exercise for at least a week. It’s like Wiln all over again.”
I lay my head back. “What happened to Wiln?”
She tells me a story about the clockmaker’s uneven heartbeat, how it seized on him once. He nearly lost his life. Did I nearly lose mine?
I swallow. “Is Azmar still in the infirmary?”
Ritha’s lips pinch together. “I don’t know, Lark.”
“Perg?”
“I don’t know.”